


wash her away

by cdocks



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: AU, F/M, older!gale, older!prim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 11:59:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/560832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cdocks/pseuds/cdocks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>older!prim/gale -- like pink cheeks, like this, then that,<br/>like a dragonfly wing in the sun reflecting<br/>the color of opals, like all the hours<br/>we leave behind</p>
<p>(written for the hunger games fic-a-thon in march '12)</p>
            </blockquote>





	wash her away

The day after the Games end, Prim cuts her hair. 

Gale only knows this because he comes over, keeping his promise, taking care of them, even though that house hurts now, still full of echoes and scent and sensations of her, hiding in the corners, drowned out by the lingering sounds of the screaming that began, loud and piercing and shrill, bringing him in from where he'd been wandering around, afraid to go in, afraid to stay away, because it was down to three, it was down to that Career boy, to the baker and to her.

By the time he pushed the door open, the two tributes from District 12 were dead with berry juice still staining their lips and Prim was screaming and screaming like she'd never stop. 

But when he finds her the day after, with a golden braid in each hand, with wisps of what's left framing her small, tear-streaked, pale, pale face, she isn't screaming. She isn't even crying anymore. She just looks up at him and says, in a voice soft and sweet and the exact opposite of her sister's -- "Katniss taught me to braid my hair."

//

They never speak that name again.

//

Hair grows back, and the first time Gale kisses her, it's soft and shining and just above her waist, a waist that he can span with his hands, a waist that he used to hug her around, used to toss her up and hold her on his shoulders, giggling and pointing at everything, at her goat in it's pen, at the cakes in the bakery window, at the little yellow flowers -- Look, Gale, look, it's me! -- on the bush by her door. 

Gale doesn't remember when he stopped lifting her up to tickle and tease and started lifting her up to kiss and hold. He can't even recall when she stopped being her sister, stopped being his responsibility and task and burden to care for, and became someone else, became just Prim, just a sweet sweet golden girl, soft pink cheeks and big bright eyes, long hair always always loose and framing her face when she smiles at him. Gale doesn't remember when he stopped remembering her sister while kissing her.

And some nights, when the almost-woman gives way to the little girl again, when Prim shudders and whines and sobs into her pillow and into his chest and moans the name that echoes inside him with every heartbeat, Gale realizes that he never really stopped remembering. And neither did she.

And they never will.


End file.
